Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I think I have early Alzheimer's. Honest to God, I forget everything. I can never remember where I park my car - I've had to call friends who went to lunch with me to ask where I parked my car on the way back into the office. I never remember where people's houses are, even if I've driven to them over and over again. I have to detail every last minute of my schedule into my calendar or I'm toast. I can't recall much about my childhood, and as far as I know, it was a good one - no memories to repress. My brothers remember things that happened and laugh and talk about it, and as they're recounting their stories, I just laugh and play along as though I remember. But in reality, I'm doing the same thing my Dad does when he didn't hear a question someone asked him. I just nod and smile.

It's embarrassing, really. The Husband will say something like 'don't you remember when we were looking at houses and we saw the one with the green stairs and the tricked out garage?' And I'll think for a minute and mentally reach as far back into my memory as possible, only to come up with nothing. I pretty much only remember the house we looked at that had a dirt basement, and the only reason I remember that house is that I'm convinced to this day that there was a dead body down there.

Even Bumblebee remembers things that I don't! She's only FOUR years old! "Mama, remember when we went twick-o-tweating and I was a spider and Grandma came along and we went to Gene's house and he didn't wecognize me?"

Uh, vaguely. Maybe. Or not.

And tv shows? Movie lines? Forget about it. My brothers will spend hours quoting movies verbatim. I have a good friend who remembers every Seinfeld episode ever. If I try to do that, I sputter things like "You want the truth?! You can't deal with.. or is it take? Maybe it's handle. Yeah, it's handle. You can't handle the truth!"

There are these great podcasts called Brain Teasers, Memory tricks, etc. They're supposed to help you exercise your brain to improve things like memory. So far, they haven't worked. One of them suggested I park my car in a different spot every day as sort of a calisthenic for my brain. It only ended up stressing me out and making me late for daycare pickup.

For each child we carry, we lose brain cells. I don't know why. I have blamed it on "cranio-placental shunt," "progesterone-induced dementia," and even "fetal brain parasite." Whatever the mechanism, the outcome is the same: kids equal negative IQ points.Don't know where this leaves the childless, but I have to agree with krobzoo that years of binge drinking don't help either!

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Reading List

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